San Francisco has its first fully automated restaurant – a ‘humanless’ experience. Are any jobs safe from the rise of the robots?Whether we like it or not we must think about what the future of employment will look like. Much of what was once done by human hands is now done by a machine. This makes production more efficient in terms of time and reduces costs. However, unless we want to create and live in a world where no one can afford to buy the things, so efficiently made because their jobs have been taken over by machines, we need to think carefully about what the future of employment looks like and how we prepare for it.Are there any jobs that cannot be done by a robot?Pearson claimed in December 2015 that robots could never take over in the following job roles:TeachersTeachers need to be able to connect emotionally with pupils and Pearson has argued that this is not something that a robot could ever do.Police officersPolicing requires the use of human judgement; something according to Pearson that a robot could not replicate.Personnel / motivational leadership rolesMotivating other people is, according to Pearson something only another human being can doSome might argue that in fact in may be possible to programme robots to react to children in a way that at least simulates a human emotional connection or that robots could be programmed with a moral code which would enable them to effectively police people – let’s leave this to one side for a moment though. What if you are not planning on being a teacher, police officer or motivational leader?The changing face of employmentEven if all manufacturing roles were replaced with automata this wouldn’t necessarily mean the end of human job roles – we would still need people to invent, design, engineer and maintain those robotic systems that were being used so perhaps it is more a case of thinking about developing skills that are appropriate to these roles. Either way, maybe the 1920s book Rossum’s Universal Robots by Karel Capek should be made compulsory reading in schools?
